


'til we're home

by catalysis



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Pining, so much pining im sorry kita san
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29801928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalysis/pseuds/catalysis
Summary: every summer, shinsuke tends his fields. he tends to atsumu too.
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48
Collections: Haikyuu Writer Jukebox Round One - Mitski





	'til we're home

**Author's Note:**

> based (loosely) on madame mitski's "a pearl" for hq writer jukebox round 1; bolded+italicized lines are from the song.
> 
> title from bay faction's "faux snow globe"
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5B1qb5zjli8EIb0EFJgliR?si=LE80HtKcQlC3MuT7UEcY1g)

_Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting._  
-Roland Barthes, _A Lover’s Discourse_

* * *

**_i. you’re growing tired of me; you love me so hard and i still can’t sleep_ **

Atsumu doesn’t call. He can’t, not when the whole conceit of their arrangement is the refreshment, the surprise. From the first time he’d shown up at Shinsuke’s front door with a duffel bag in hand, to every time after that, there always has to be the suggestion of uncertainty. Will he, won’t he, show up after the volleyball season ends, after the interviews about victory, after the ones about defeat? 

~~_Will he come home?_~~

Sometimes, when Shinsuke goes to bed, he wonders if he’ll wake up to a dream. Where there’s an extra pair of shoes on the genkan, a third chair tucked up under the dining table, another mug turned upside down on the dish rack. He dreams of mundanity, of things he has already seen, things he already knows the ache of. The difference, though, is that in his dreams, they’re permanent. An unbroken cycle, a golden ring he swears he feels the ghost of even after he's woken up.

**_ii. you’re growing tired of me and all the things i don’t talk about_ **

Shinsuke could call, he knows. He could dial Atsumu with his hardly used cell phone, or even with the landline he only keeps around for his grandmother. There are words he’s supposed to know, that he’s supposed to say; a request, a summons, ~~a confession~~.

But those words, shaped of desires he’s never learned to free, stay trapped in his throat.

 _I miss you_ , he mouths at the mirror, but there's no voice to the words. No meaning either, because to speak them wouldn't be a statement, but a request, a plea with no possibility of fulfillment.

So instead, Shinsuke waits. Waits for spring to arrive with its gentle, warm hands and coax him to start preparing for the planting. 

It’s early April, usually, when Atsumu arrives, almost like a magic trick, with how he’s not there one second and there the next.

Atsumu arrives and fills the space up with an easy grin. It burrows into Shinsuke’s chest as if it has always been there and dislodges a feeling that he hesitates to call relief, because to do so would be to admit that there was doubt in the first place. There’s no room for doubt right now, though, no time for it even. There’s rice to be planted, and there’s a heart to handle with the same amount of care.

**_iii. sorry, i don’t want your touch; it’s not that i don’t want you; sorry, i can’t take your touch_ **

It’s the molasses slow drip of summertime that makes him sluggish. He leans into touch as if it clings to his shoulder, his collarbone, his waist. He kisses the tang of umeboshi off of Atsumu’s teeth and he lets it boil in his gut. He lets Atsumu’s gaze simmer on the back of his neck until it turns sunbaked and sure. 

As the sun lowers towards the horizon, he kicks his boots off and lets Atsumu rub the dirt off his cheek, his touch searing even in comparison to the afternoon sun. After dinner, Atsumu will smudge aloe across the sunburn on the back of his neck and press a kiss to his jaw. 

Atsumu will touch him and Shinsuke will savor it like he can burn it into his memory, in hopes that the ghost of hands can cut through the haze of winter, when there will be nothing else for him to do but remember. 

**_iv. it’s just that i fell in love with a war; nobody told me it ended_ **

He lets himself fall in love again, every summer, with each Atsumu that shows up on his front step.

And then the crisp air of autumn reminds him that not even the tackiest syrup can hold them together. It’s late summer, actually, when the phone calls start. Atsumu ignores them at first, a practiced charade of nonchalance. It’s funny how they pretend to not hear the ringing, familiar and scheduled as it is. Sometimes, early in the morning, when Shinsuke can hear a hushed voice through the cracked open bathroom door, he can feel the chilly grip of the approaching season slipped in through the window. He slides it shut and gets back into bed. 

**_v. and it left a pearl in my head and i roll it around every night, just to watch it glow_ **

Atsumu leaves, like he always does, before late autumn can arrive with its firestained oranges or delicate pinks. Mercifully, perhaps, he usually leaves mid-harvest, while Shinsuke is supposed to be too busy to notice the absence. Of course, he notices anyway.

So, after the harvest, once he can’t make any more excuses, he puts the extra mug and chair away, tucks the tea he doesn’t like back into the cupboard, and exchanges the second pillow for a third blanket.

If summer is a slow drip, autumn is a swift breeze, swirling away the first fallen leaves, leaving Shinsuke’s hands clean and empty. Those hands weren’t meant to hold everything that is Miya Atsumu. 

He’s meant to tend to this familiar plot of land. He’s meant to take care of his grandmother. But he is not meant to love Atsumu, no matter how many summers he puts into it. He can make himself into the beckoning tide, he can offer himself as the binding pomegranate seeds, he can spoon his heart honey-slick into cupped palms, but he can’t make this love into anything other than what it is. 

**_vi. every night, baby, that’s where i go_ **

Shinsuke doesn’t call. He can’t, not when he’s not even sure what he would say. He considers calling when he knows Atsumu has practice, just so he could say he tried, but even that feels out of place. And if Atsumu did pick up, what would he say then? What could he say that he couldn’t whisper against a summer-warmed cheek? 

He lets the rosy memories keep him thawed through the snowy weeks. Time passes differently in winter. In summer, there’s so much of it; so much sun, so much warmth built up inside of him that it nearly feels cheap. Winter, though, takes those moments that are a dime-a-dozen in summer and turns them priceless. A set of golden coins to lay over his eyes, to pay his way through the coldest months.

In winter, all he can do is wait and remember.

* * *

_And so, as the light died, we put our mouths on the least lovable, the too-full, the easy-bruised, we shouted,_ I choose you, and you, and you, and you, _and canned that hunger, and spooned it into our mouths on the coldest days._  
-Franny Choi, “Perihelion: A History of Touch”

**Author's Note:**

> お帰り
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/nyamayachi)


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